How to Stop Worrying About What People Think

“Don’t worry about what other people think.”“Just do you.”“If they don’t like you, they’re just jealous…”

As soon as you start to say out loud that you’re worried about what other people think, someone is usually ready with a convenient cliché, aren’t they?

It’s so easy to simply tell people not to worry but what you really need to know is how to stop worrying.

Someone in the Choose to Have it All FB Group asked this and I turned it into a mini-mindset training. (Please excuse my cut off head in the thumbnail!)

Of course we all know that being liked isn’t important but it doesn’t feel that way.

We’ve all heard that being liked isn’t important and that hasn’t really stopped many people from wanting to be, has it?

Yes, being liked feels good. It feels validating. It’s a vanity metric that can give us some confidence when we’re feeling unsure and vulnerable. Here’s the real problem with that truth: it gives other people the power to tell the story we should be telling ourselves.

When you decide your worth based on what other people think, your self-esteem rises and falls with the tide of public opinion. That is a tide that has no rhyme or reason. People can hate on you for no reason, because they’re hungry, or because their boss just pissed them off and they have to take it out on somebody.

Their loving on you can come with an equal lack of reason and it can go as quickly as it came.

When we get clear on who we are and accept ourselves, we empower ourselves to tell our own stories.

Once we stop acting on our fear of not being liked, we can get on with the business of telling people what we want them to think and know about us.

We can control the dialogue. If we tell them and show them who we are and they still don’t like us, that’s actually good news. They aren’t our tribe. They won’t resonate with things we care about. They won’t help us be bigger, better versions of ourselves.

The only thing we really accomplish when we try to be liked by everyone is that we set ourselves up to fail. We play small and we try to be what everyone wants us to be.

Everything actually starts to “work” better when we aren’t liked.

Of course it doesn’t feel that way at first. It really is true. Some people won’t like us and we will live to tell the tale. You just need to get through the whole not being liked part, first. When people move away from you and from who you are, they make room for the people who do connect with you and who will like you, to find you.

And it gets better… you can stop stressing out about being perfect!

Here’s the thing….first you worry about being liked. Then, you worry about being perfect. Then you forget one important thing…no one actually likes a know it all…no one really likes the teacher’s pet, the top of the class, etc.

What a cluster you’ve created for yourself with that.

Imperfections create room for connections.

It’s in our imperfect moments, in our screw-ups, our mistakes, and our vulnerability that people find us, relate to us, and feel compelled to connect. In striving to be perfect, you are pushing everyone away. To really bring people in, to really connect, you have to be real and perfection is simply not real and it’s not lasting.

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At Choose to Have it All.com, Heather Gray is a Mindset and Performance Coach with 15 years of clinical experience. Working locally in Wakefield, MA or offering online sessions through phone or Skype, Heather helps her clients identify what it is that they want but don’t have. She then teaches them the movement required to get it. Learn more from Heather by following her blog or grab her FREE Guide for Getting Unstuck.